It has become a popular way among people to enjoy weekends, holidays, and vacations by driving to the countryside for outdoors leisure activities, such as sightseeing, fishing, camping, and going to some resorts. A problem with such outdoors activities in summertime is there are not always shady places available for taking a rest. It is therefore desirable to have a car equipped with sun-blocking means.
There are currently many awnings for use outdoors available for mounting on a roof panel of an automobile. However, various kinds of tools and fastening means are needed to first fix four sets of locating means to outer edges of the roof panel, such as drip moldings. Thereafter, the heavy awning is screwed to the four sets of locating means before it can be extended to block sunshine. It is apparently complicate and troublesome to mount the conventional awning on roof panel for use outdoors. Once the awning has been fixed to the roof panel, it is not easy to dismount it therefrom. Therefore, a user would usually keep the awning fixed to the roof panel. However, the awning fixed to the roof panel looks strange when the user drives the car carrying the awning on the street. The awning fixed to the roof panel over a long time tends to have a shortened usable life due to exposure to sunshine and rainwater from time to time. The awning fixed to the roof panel also increases an overall height of the car carrying it to prevent the car from driving into an elevator-type mechanical parking that usually has a fixed height.
FIG. 1 is an exploded perspective view of a conventional awning supported on roof panel for use outdoors developed by the same inventor of the present invention. As shown, the awning includes an automatic shade roller (10), two long metal frames (20) for supporting the shade roller (10) thereon, and four sucker units (30) for firmly attaching to a roof panel of an automobile and supporting the two metal frames (20) thereon. The above-mentioned awning may be easily detachably mounted on the roof panel to solve the problem existed in the conventional awning for mounting on a car. Moreover, since the sucker units (30) may be adjusted to different angular positions relative to the roof panel, they could be attached to the roof panel without being affected by, for example, antenna frame and roof rack that are frequently fixedly provided on the roof panel of a car, particularly a station wagon. The sucker units (30) may also be mounted on a roof panel having a relatively large curvature.
However, the shade roller (10) must be connected to the two long metal frames (20) by way of sequentially extending screws (21) through two fixing plates (22) and through holes (23) on the long metal frames (20) to engage with nuts (24) below the metal frames (20) and thereby associate the fixing plates (22) with the metal frames (20), and then locating the fixing plates (22) in a slide way (11) provided at a lower side of the shade roller (10), and finally tightening the nuts (24) to the screws (21) for the shade roller (10) to fixedly mount on the two metal frames (20). From the standpoint of consumers, it is desirable to further simply lift the structure of the above-described awning supported on roof panel for use outdoors, so that a user may handle the awning in an even more convenient manner.